Saturday, November 3, 2012

Denis MacShane Forced To Resign Over £12,900 - David Laws Steals £60,000 and Is Given A Job in Government

What complete fools these MPs can be. Whatever you think of the expenses scandal and it angers me as much as all of us, this was a totally stupid thing to do. Why oh why oh why Mr MacShane? Why on earth did you do it? Hopefully when the furore has died down people will remember the good things you did, but at the moment most are very angry and others like me are angry and sad at the same time and feel let down.

The son of a Polish father and Irish mother, Denis MacShane is the Catholic MP and fought anti-Semitism. He campaigned relentlessly for jobs, higher wages and vastly improved public services and better pensions. Yesterday it all came to a very sad end, years and years of work and campaigning for people and his constituents came to an abrupt halt and he was suspended from parliament for one year with no pay, effectively ending his 18 year career.

The Labour MP for Rotherham and former European Minister, ran into trouble with his expense claims back in 2009 when all the other MPs did, these are not new claims. He genuinely regrets his crass stupidity, not just be cause he was caught, but because this will allow the loathsome BNP to claim a victory, even though it has nothing to do with them, this will hurt MacShane as he has stood firm against racism right in the face of the vile BNP, where he hasn't flinched against their tirade of abuse. For now this will end his campaign against injustice and racism, hopefully in the future he will be able to pick that mantle up again and fight just as hard, if not harder than ever before against this vile ugliness of racial hatred that will destroy our society if we allow it to.
He made 19 false claims totaling £12,900, this included the cost of 8 laptops for his interns which he allowed them to keep, the rest of the claims were spent indirectly doing his job travelling around Europe. The Cross Parliament Standards Committee accepted that Mr MacShane did not benefit personally from his claims. He has repaid the cash. At the time he made the claims he was going through years of pain and distress, his daughter was killed in a sky diving accident, his marriage broke up and his daughter''s mother died, he may have been affected greatly by depression and events in his life and the balance of his mind disturbed, let us not be too quick to judge.

Yesterday he said:
"In light of the decision to uphold the BNP complaint about expenses claimed in connection with my parliamentary work in Europe and in combating anti-Semitism, I have decided, for the sake of my wonderful Rotherham constituency and beloved Labour party, to resign as an MP. - "I love the House of Commons and I hope by resigning I can serve by showing MPs must take responsibility for their mistakes and accept the consequences of breaching House of Commons rules".
His decision came after Ed Miliband suspended him from the Labour party. Mr MacShane has made the right decision for his constituency, for parliament, and for the Labour party. He and Ed Miliband are right in the decisions they have made, no matter what the sums involved, we cannot have one rule for MPs and another for everyone else. His resignation will trigger a by election in the near future.

Mr MacShane's resignation was the only credible option and he took it, the public remain extremely angry about the expense scandal and while so many people are struggling to make ends meet it will remain a contentious issue.

However, the public are going to be very confused about these two cases, where is the parity and fairness in these two decisions?

Parliamentary Standards watchdogs saw fit to suspend MacShane for a year with no pay, over £12,900 expenses which they accept he did not gain personally from.

The same Parliamentary Standards watchdogs decided to suspend David Laws for just 7 DAYS for cheating the taxpayer out of over what is now known to total of £60,000 which he and his gay lover gained personally from.

Denis MacShane has mitigating circumstances of the death of his daughter, his marriage breakdown and the death of his daughter's mother, this kind of thing can and frequently does upset the balance of one's mind and can be a reason why people act out of character. However, the committee did not accept this. MacShane used the £12,900 to part fund his trips to Europe in the capacity of his work and he gave his interns the laptops, he did not gain personally.

David Laws put forward as mitigating circumstances that he was a secret homosexual, living with his partner which he did not want his family to discover. The committee must have known that the so called "secret" of Mr Laws homosexuality was not a secret in Westminster, everyone knew, yet the committee accepted this. Even if this were true and he did not want his family to discover his sexual preferences, why on earth should they? How would they know what David Laws claimed in expenses? Does his family trawl through his expense claims? I find this incredulous.
John Lyons said that Laws broke 6 rules, and suspended him for just 7 days for serious and substantial breaches of parliamentary standards, but said that there was no evidence that he did out of personal gain for himself and his partner?  Rubbish! Absolute complete and utter rubbish! Of course he and his partner personally gained out of having over £60,000 paid off their mortgage and towards their household expenses, who does Lyons thinks gained then, the church mice?

At least Denis MacShane had the integrity and decency to fall on his own sword, not so David Laws, he was forced to resign his new job as Secretary to the Treasury, but refused to resign as an MP and during his time supposedly outside Government, we later learn that he has been kept close and in the loop and as soon as he was able, David Cameron brought him back into the Government as an Education Minister. Great now we have a thief having contact with our children and Cameron placed him there!

This Tory led government have come down so hard on people they say are cheating the system inferring that genuine people on benefits are "cheats, layabouts, scroungers" and that the genuinely disabled are "malingerers" etc. Many are dying as a result and French company, Atos have fraudulently won a government contract, but nothing apparently can stop this bent government from doing what it wants, or treating us any way they want. Read the tragic story of Kieran age just 13, who claims Atos killed his sick dad. This is the kind of government we are living with in Tory Britain 2012, one rule for them and another for us.

If an ordinary person was found guilty of claiming housing benefit when they knew they were not entitled to it as they were cohabiting, and it went to court and they used as an excuse for mitigating circumstances that it was because they were gay and they did not want their family to find out, do you think that "excuse" would hold sway with a judge? No of course it wouldn't, they would be found guilty and sent to prison. David Laws claimed board and lodging for a room in his partner's house (which was a lie because he was cohabiting) he knew he was cohabiting and he still claimed knowing it was wrong, he gained personally from this money and so did his partner. If the taxpayer had not coughed up for his so called "rented" room in his lover's house, then he would have had to pay his lover out of his own bank account and that is gaining personally. The fact is that David Laws a former banker who made millions in the City is a multi-millionaire and he need not have claimed a penny and he wouldn't have even felt it, the fact is that he is greedy and the more money people like Laws have, the more they want. He is greedy, grasping and grabbing just like his Tory doning bankster chums in the City who brought this country to ruin and who helped other banksters in other countries bring the global economy to ruin, and they are still getting richer with their fatcat salaries and fatcat bonuses, and they are still trying to blame the former Labour government for what they [the banksters] did to the global economy, while we the poor people are struggling to pay for it all, with cuts to our standard of living, our jobs, our children's futures, our public services etc - one rule for the, and another for us!

Denis MacShane did wrong but at least he acted and did the right thing, and is now suffering as a result, his career is over and somehow because of his own stupidity he has to try and rebuild his shattered life. I for one am not going to take pleasure out of that!

David Laws stole over £60,000 from the taxpayer, he resigned his cabinet job but kept on as an MP, when he should have resigned, or Nick Clegg should have sacked him and "laughingly" has now been returned to Government by Prime Minister David Cameron!

Just goes to show, it is not what you know but who you know. MacShane may have done wrong, but so did  Laws and even more so, so why is the difference in the treatment of MacShane and Laws so completely different?
Two wrongs do not make a right and that's true, however, what we should expect that each person is treated equally and fairly and they are not.

I also stand back in total amazement at the way the Tories are taking the moral high ground here and trying to make things even worse for MacShane, while all the while knowing that their prime minister and leader of the Tory party has just:


All this and so much more not even touching on the shady deals and goings on between private health companies, shadow banks and their lobbyists and the Tory party and this Tory led government.
And the Tories have the brass neck to go for Denis MacShane? They beggar belief, they really do, hypocrites. There is also a link of an elite paedophile ring leading directly to a former Tory PM, yet once again the Tory governed BBC Newsnight have succumbed to political pressure and failed to name the person, even though they have a witness who has bravely waived his anonymity who will testify to what he said this Tory grandee did to him when he was an underage child living in a children's home - the BBC and Newsnight in particular did this before with Jimmy Savile and now they are doing it again. The Tories are not only turning this country into a laughing stock, they are also turning the BBC into a laughing stock.

The Tories are not telling us that along with Labour they had Lords and MPs who have served time for fiddling their expenses (quite rightly so), it seems to have escaped their attention. It also escapes their attention that while Labour MPs get severely punished, Tory and Lib Dem MPs who make up the government get away with it all! We do not want preference, we want fairness, if we do not have that, where does that leave parliament and our judicial system?

The difference in the way in which David Cameron and Ed Miliband have handled such matters is strikingly clear, while the prime minister compounded his actions, showing his appalling weakness, lack of leadership, poor judgement, favouritism and 'nepotism' and tries to cling on to his disgraced MPs and ministers and even brings them back into government as soon as he can (when will Andrew Mitchell return?) By direct contrast leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, shows strength of leadership, excellent judgement and no matter what whirlwind it may reap, does what he knows to be the right thing. No party leader can control their MPs and minister and cannot possibly be expected to know what they are all doing, however,the test comes when they are presented with difficulties and difficult painful decisions need to be made and Ed Miliband passes with flying colours every time, while David Cameron the Prime Minister fails comprehensively every single time exposing his lack of judgement, weakness and poor leadership, incompetence, arrogance and rank hypocrisy.

Who governs the crazy disparities of the Parliamentary Standards Committee? Or are they a rule unto themselves and the Tory MPs and the Liberal Democrat MPs effective colluded to come down so hard on MacShane, while colluding in exactly the same way to allow David Laws to get away with a far more serious breaches virtually Scott free?

Perhaps MacShane should not have said his daughter died in accident and that his long standing marriage cracked under the pressure, or that his daughter's mother also died, he should have simply said he did what he did because he was "gay and didn't want his family to find out"? Of course he isn't gay, but that would hardly matter to this committee apparently. Judging by their hypocritical and gross unfairness of treatment between the two MPs, this would have been enough to get MacShane off (maybe only if he were a Tory or Lib Dem of course).

From the economy, to welfare, education, defence, policing, the NHS, the BBC, this hopeless, hapless incompetent shower of crooks are totally ruining this country and now they are in the process of turning the "Mother of all Parliaments into a joke too.


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